Teaching a globally distributed project course using Scrum practices

• Published in: Proceedings of the Second International Workshop on Collaborative Teaching of Globally Distributed Software Development pp. 30 - 34
• Main Authors: Damian, Daniela, Lassenius, Casper, Paasivaara, Maria, Borici, Arber, Schröter, Adrian
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Published: Piscataway, NJ, USA IEEE Press 09.06.2012
• Series: ACM Conferences
• Subjects: distributed Scrum; software engineering education; agile development; global software engineering
• ISBN: 9781467318181; 1467318183
• DOI: 10.5555/2663670.2663677

This paper describes the goals, design and initial challenges encountered in teaching a globally distributed software development course in collaboration between the University of Victoria, Canada and Aalto University, Finland. The project-driven collaboration course involved 16 students in Canada and nine students in Finland, divided into three globally distributed Scrum teams working on the same project. The teams worked on extending Agilefant, an open-source backlog management system, in direct interaction with its product owner. The collaborative development is based on the Scrum methodology. We describe how the Scrum methodology was implemented, and adapted to work in a distributed environment, as well as the infrastructure used to support collaboration, e.g. local war-rooms, and multiple communication tools. We conclude the paper with describing initial challenges encountered, including cultural, semester, course and curriculum differences, as well as technical and time-zone issues.